What do you think about abortion

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Which is why I mention it as the cut-off point for an abortion. You wont know if this fetus will be anencephalic until the rest of the brain develops so that point is irrelevant to consider in context. That it regulates autonomic functions means the brain's basic function is up and running and thus its a developing sentient being. Of course its not sapient at this stage.


Baka. Everything starts to develop as soon as gastrulation occurs; the question is when things (the brain in particular) are actually functional. Random neurons firing in isolation do not a consciousness make.[/quote]

If you want to nitpick semantics then 'start' is when the ovum meets the sperm. Really now? Read my previous comment on sentience to address your consciousness comment.



Yes its there again. If you want a child you won't mind the discomforts. That was my point. I too look forward to that day when the man can have equal say on whether his child is to be aborted or not (including the option of him carrying it).

Nor sentient. Nor even having the beginning shreds of sentience. If you think that autonomic functions - which do not start at this stage, btw - are the 'basic functions of the human brain,' then you have a significantly lower impression of humans than I do. At this stage the embryo doesn't even have as much nervous function as a clam, nor will it for a while.

The neural tube barely closes at the 7th or 8th week; it hasn't started to differentiate into neurons or any kind of CNS tissue at that point. The heart begins to beat primitively in this week not because of the brainstem, but because heart tissue beats on its own in the complete absence of neural signaling. Calling the closing of the neural tube the 'beginning of the brainstem' is not much more relevant than calling gastrulation 'the beginning of the brain stem.'

[/quote]
You completely missed the point. Pregnancy is significantly more than an 'uncomfortable, temporary, inconvenience.' I agree with you on looking forward to the day when a man can take on a zef, though, if the female partner doesn't want it; I strongly suspect that oppostition to abortion will evaporate when that happens. Just out of curiosity, do you think that when this theoretical advance in embryo transer happens, a man should be able to have a zef that he's taken on removed at, say, 4 months (or any other time after your 7-week cutoff time) if he changes his mind and decides that he doesn't want to go through with it? Or should he be forced to go to full term?

I think most people would feel the person was justified in doing that. Of course, most people don't want their child to die, so just as they don't abort their child in the first place, they wouldn't do it again.

Judith Jarvis Thompson uses the violinist analogy to illustrate this point. I'm sure you've heard it. If not, Google it.

Here is my honest 2 cents....

Unless a woman was raped (pregnant against her will) or is in legitimate medical peril if she tries to bring a baby full-term (meaning severe physical complications or death), it is murder to want to destroy the fetus.

I say this for a simple reason. Pregnancy is the result/consequence of a knowing choice. Women groups say they want the power to choose. Well, you got that power when you decided to take a guy home and have sex with him. You got that power when you chose to have unprotected sex or use a birth control means that you know has a possibility of failure.

Wanting to terminate an unwanted pregnancy after that many levels of choice (to have sex and to utilize a means of contraception) is simply asking too much. You want to evade responsibility for your choices. Don't want to have an unwanted pregnancy? DON'T HAVE SEX! It really is that simple.

There is also an issue of legal inequity. If a woman wants a child but the father does not, the woman can bring the baby to term and force the father to pay for support until the kid reaches 18 years of age. The father has no options in this. Indeed most state laws allow a man to be trapped into this obligation because he presented himself as the father (because the mother said it was his kid) in spite of future DNA evidence proving conclusively that he IS NOT the father. In contrast, a man CAN NOT compel a woman to bring the baby to term, give him full custody for a full release of any obligation to support the child. The power to give that fetus life or to destroy is exclusively the mother's even though she is only obligated to bear it for 9 months. The father is 50% "owner" of that fetus' genetic material, will be obligated to support it for the next 18 years but gets no say in whether the fetus can live or die. That's simply messed up.

Heck, even the idea of opposing an abortion ban for pregnancies after 20 weeks is insanity itself. 20 weeks is roughly five months. If you can't bring yourself to end a pregnancy in the first five months, what are you giving up by being told you can't do it after five months? It's more about addressing "buyer's remorse" than the "right to choose." You chose to have sex. You chose to not use protection or used protection with a probability of failure. You chose to NOT get an abortion in the first 20 weeks. NOW you want to exercise your "right to choose?"

Or it could be that women alone aren't the only ones interested in the survival of the child. The state could show active interest--though I'm not sure why. We've had at least one person in our community with some bizarre grudge against us call DHS on us to investigate how we care for our children. This happened on three separate occasions over about a three or four month period. From what I understand, DHS calls don't normally have a happy ending, but perhaps we were just fortunate or happened to be at home at the right time because the social workers couldn't find anything to substantiate the calls. They gave us some literature on how to baby-proof our house, which was stuff we already did anyway, and promptly left after a cursory walk-through of the house.

The point I'm trying to make here is that the state already plays in intrusive role in the lives of the people when it comes to parenting. All it takes is an anonymous call to the CPS hotline. Not that I support FLDS or anything because the abuse is evident to most outsiders, but that group in Texas got raided on the basis of a bogus phone call. Now, the calls are anonymous, so it confuses me on how someone can get away with trying to hurt my family while the busted the lady responsible for the FLDS fiasco. Yes, I have a very low opinion of DHS/CPS and social workers in general. These people, who are state henchmen, can come in at any time and impose their opinions on your way of life when that's no one's business but your own. Now, if it can genuinely be established that your lifestyle or failure to keep up your home within certain limits is a danger to children, that's one thing. But in essence the state can exercise a large degree of control over what goes on in your house, even if you're a law-abiding citizen.

Judith Jarvis Thompson's arguments fail in light of the fact that society as a whole does not allow the absolute autonomy of any individual. Society and/or the state ultimately gets to choose how it or they will allow your children to develop in what kind of environment. Once a unique, human individual is formed and is implanted in the womb, the parents are responsible for it, most often due to choices they made. And here's where I think Thompson's arguments (and even objections to her arguments) start to get silly. If you voluntarily engage in sexual intercourse, your are willingly assuming any risks that go with it. Sure, contraceptives can fail. That's how we had our third baby. So what? Just have the baby! IF it is fair for society/state to intrude into the family home to tell parents how to care for their kids, then it is also perfectly fair for society/state to dictate what can/can't happen inside the womb. If a woman is bent on aborting the child, then society can decide that she's not mentally capable of making decisions concerning her body and a developing child. She could be held in a specialized institution where she'd be protected from herself and the growing baby would be protected from her. At birth, the child could be considered a ward of the state unless/until such time as the child could be adopted. She'd have to be observed for a period of time afterwards, given counseling/therapy during that time, and returned to society as soon as it can be determined she has no further criminal intentions and that she is of sound mind.

The ONLY argument in favor of abortion I can find even remotely convincing is in the case of rape or if the pregnancy is a direct and imminent threat to the woman's life. In the first instance, her choice is removed, so the least we can do is allow her the choice to carry a pregnancy to term. The only problem with that is that the baby isn't responsible for the circumstances in which it was conceived and doesn't deserve to be punished for the action of a criminal. Therefore, should an abortion be carried out, the rapist should be tried for murder. The justification for holding a rapist responsible for someone else's choice is that criminals are already responsible for bodily injuries caused to others in the course of committing violent crimes. We already do that with rapists by incarceration. But we only do that with other crimes assuming the victims of those crimes and associated injuries survive. Everything changes if the victim dies. If rape results in conception which in turn results in killing the baby in the womb, then it becomes at the very least manslaughter. At the very least. My opinion is that since abortion is the WILLING termination of human life, the rapist should be tried for murder, preferably a capital offense.

+1

Why is this stuff so difficult for some to understand?

I noticed that Pew has done a piece on abortion based on recent data (2011-2012).

I found this slide particularly interesting (views on abortion by religious affiliation):



More here:
http://www.pewforum.org/Topics/Issues/Abortion/

It would be simple, but there's a way to have as much sex as you want without ever risking pregnancy - it's called homosexuality. You'd think some of the churches (not the Catholic church because they're against all non-procreative sexuality) would be hell bent on promoting lesbianism at least with this in mind (since it isn't even mentioned in the Bible unless you read Paul in a cock-eyed way.)

I'd just thought I'd put that out there.

It is not difficult to understand, people just disagree with you.
Almost all contraceptives have a chance of failure. So women should never have sex? I can't see all men telling their girlfriends/wives: "I'm never going to have sex with you again, because of the risk of pregnancy."

A large part of abortion rates are socio-economic factors. In the sinful Netherlands that have a reputation for killing babies and old people, "only" 13.5% of pregnancies end in abortion. Compared to 20.9 in the UK, 22.6 in the USA, and 44.7 for Russia. Better sex education, availability of contraception and higher living standards would reduce the number of abortions. I don't know the statistics, but I suspect a large part of abortions come from bad neighbourhoods.

My own personal opinion is that it's unethical to bring a child into the world that you don't want. I don't think foetuses in the first trimester have enough consciousness to qualify for personhood, so I think having an abortion in the first trimester is a completely morally neutral thing to do in itself. It even becomes a mortally positive action to abort in the first trimester when the baby is unwanted. After that, it starts to get a bit murky and in the second trimester it's a case of which is the lesser of two evils.

Also, I know this is going to be controversial to say, but I do think about the ethics of bringing more people into this overpopulated world, especially unwanted ones who are very likely to be unhappy. I think reproducing to replace the numbers we already have is fine but giving birth to a child you don't want to raise - then doing a half-hearted, resentful job of raising it, or leaving it to the state to sort out (most kids put up for adoption just end up in the state care system) is bad for society as a whole. I'm talking in general here, not many unwanted babies have fluke genius genes that cause them to be the next Einstein and they're just as likely to be the next Hitler.

Well, if you NEVER want to get pregnant, there are procedures to ensure you can't get pregnant, but I admit that's only an option if you want a one-way path. Yes, I know they can reverse vasectomies now (not that a man can't save sperm for future use), but you get the point.

However, it still begs the question....if you want to have unlimited sex but never get pregnant and you CHOOSE not to have a procedure to be sterile, then you CHOOSE to risk getting pregnant. Why not bring the child to term and give it up for adoption? I can see no justification for choosing to accept the risk that you might get pregnant then demand the right to terminate the pregnancy if and when it happens.

How do you balance the right of a fetus to live (against the will of its mother) versus the right of a female to control what is in or not in her body. The fetus could be thought of as an unwanted guest or even a tresspasser inside the woman carrying it.

Here is an analogy. Suppose you find someone stowed away in your basement during a cold winter's day. Do you have the right to evict the person even though he/she might freeze to death?
ruveyn

Its when the stem begins to form and its the start of the brain. A human brain with the potential of sentience. That is why I choose it as the cutoff.



Oh? So its a 9 month period of horrible, unbearable pain? C'mon now you're just focusing on the word itself because it gives you a gut rejection feeling. Let me put it this way: If it was MY child and I did not want it to die I would carry it for 9 months even if it made me feel like I had a porcupine stuck up my butt.




Yes he should. If he does not its murder. As another poster put it (very well I might add) : Its about responsibility. Changing your mind and killing the child just because it hasn't been brought out of a womb environment is no different than a person in charge of a toddler abandoning it on the street because they don't feel like caring for the child any more. You do the deed (adopt or have sex or the hypothetical dad that chooses to carry the child instead of the woman) you are responsible for it. This 'its my body' nonsense is just an excuse. It ceased to be 'yours' the moment that baby needs it to survive.

*searches for a "only show posts made by women in this thread" button.*

*does not find one.*

This thread sucks...

The "just abstain" argument is an interesting one. I am assured, however, that for a lot of people regular sex is important for good health.

Sex does not have to mean pregnancy any more, because we have contraception and abortion. To be honest, I'm not sure why people shouldn't be allowed to have abortions. Sure, you have the option of carrying it to term- but if you want to abort it, why shouldn't you be able to? We should accept the benefits that abortion brings. Less mouths to feed, children are more valued, less crime (as the mothers who get abortions are also those who traditionally were most likely to raise criminals- young, poor, single, etc.), and the ability to enjoy sex without having to worry too much about pregnancy.

It's nearly impossible to find a doctor who will sterilise a woman who hasn't had children yet. It's easier to get it done privately, but the operation is expensive which makes it inaccessible to poor women.